Details of a claim for business card printing costs made by David Miliband

IPSA holds the information that you request.

You may wish to know that IPSA publishes details relating to all expenses claimed by Mr Miliband, along with details of expenses incurred by all other MPs, once every two months on our publication website. A user guide can also be found on the website to assist you with your search.

IPSA will not, as a matter of course, publish images of receipts or invoices supporting claims. We believe that the information we publish proactively on IPSA’s Publication website provides a significant amount of detail and gives a clear picture of what MPs are claiming for and affords reassurance that claims are both appropriate for MPs to carry out their parliamentary functions and in accordance with the rules set out in the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses.

The following table at Annex A provides the information released on IPSA’s publication website relating to this claim, as well as all additional information contained on the invoice and claim form. Annex B is a redacted copy of the accompanying claim sheet submitted by the MP. Please note that we have withheld account numbers, invoice numbers and barcodes. We have withheld this information under Section 31(1)(a) (Law enforcement) of the FOI Act. This section of the Act states that information is exempt if its disclosure under the FOI Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention (or detection) or crime.

After considering the nature of the withheld information it is our opinion that were a disclosure to be made into the public domain it is probable that this information could be traced back to sensitive personal or commercial information which could be used for criminal activity. Although we recognise the public interest in transparency surrounding the publishing of invoice information there is also a strong public interest in ensuring that as an organisation we are able to protect our service users from the threat of being subjected to criminal activity, which is achieved through our capacity to withhold certain information from disclosure. It is for this reason that we have decided that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

We have also withheld information regarding the name of an employee working for Mr Miliband under section 40 (personal information) of the FOI Act as the information constitutes third party data. Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. (Please see http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents). Under the FOI Act disclosure of this information would breach the fair processing principle contained in the Data Protection Act (DPA), where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential.”

Annex A

Annex B

Attached